


A Solid Right Hook

by Go0se



Series: Prettiest Girl At The Party [1]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Black Parade Era, Coming Out, Danger Days Era, F/F, Frank Iero's ridiculous dog army, Girls protecting each other is totally punk rock, No transphobic violence, Pre-MCR, Revenge Era, Trans Female Character, Trans Girl Frankie Iero, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7314493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frankie was sick of the boy's certainty that he could talk to them whenever he felt like, was the thing.</p>
<p>Five times Frankie Iero got into a fight and once when she didn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Late Spring, 1990

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the FIATC song! Some details changed to protect the innocent. I don't know when or how actual-Frank and Jamia got all the dogs (except for Peppers and Sweet Pea, who apparently actual-Frank just found in Los Angeles and then carted around to inadvisable places in his sweaters, because he is an actual cartoon). Someone's probably made a awesome list somewhere which I cannot find because my $earch skill$ are lacking. All bus routes, schools, street names etc. in this are straight-up fictional, but the dogs are real.  
> Warnings for this chapter: schoolyard violence, casual misgendering by a parent and a school authority figure
> 
> //

It's not the first time she's hit someone at school but it was the first time she's really _meant_ it.  
Her mother had sat next to her in the office, holding her shoulder tightly, until the other kid had went through his spiel and the vice principal had waved the whole thing off. Boys being boys, or whatever. He said it was understandable. Just don't let it happen again.  
  
On the way home Frankie's mom had switched off the radio without a word. It was clear from the way her hands were clenched on the steering wheel that she didn't want the silence broken.  
That lasted about five minutes between school and the Rite Aid on the corner. “He was being _gross,_ Mom,” Frankie burst out. “We told him to leave us alone and he wouldn't!”  
“Frank Anthony,” her mom said sharply. “You're lucky you didn't get suspended. You almost _broke_ that boy's nose.”  
Frankie scowled and folded her arms. Along with being in trouble, she hated her mom using her whole name. “He deserved it,” she mumbled.  
Frankie had been sick of Tyler Hogan's assurance that he could talk to them whenever he felt like it, no matter what they thought, was the thing. And no matter what the recess monitor had said she did actually " _understand the consequences"_. Her knuckles were still stinging.  
The howl that Tyler let out before stumbling back was still worth it. More than worth it. She turned her head towards the window and smiled savagely.  
“Don't turn your face away from me,” her mother said, but she already sounded worn out. Her nice work clothes were getting wrinkled in the muggy heat of the car.  
Frankie's smile wilted a little. She hated it when her mom said stuff like _that,_ too, sounding all tired and sad. Hearing it was awful. Guilt for making her come all the way here just to pick Frankie up for a stupid fight started to well up in Frankie's throat. She shifted in her seat and closed her eyes, deciding to focus on how Meghan promised she was going to call her that night, instead of feeling bad.  
 

Meghan was the class new kid. Her family had moved to Belleville a week after school had started, when everyone had fallen into the rhythm again but none of the class' dividing lines had settled down. She wore Walmart shirts and played soccer. She liked cherry bubblegum better than any other kind, but pretended to like all gum so her parents would give her a variety pack in her lunch every day, which she would then swap for other kids' snacks.  
During her very first lunch at school Meghan had shared some gum with Frankie, and she didn't ask for any of Frank's granola back. They'd spent afternoon recess together kicking pebbles into the chain-link fence by the parking lot. It'd been fun. They kept it up every lunch recess for a week until all the gum made Frankie sick, and then they ditched the Bubble Tape Mega Roll and kept playing together anyway.   
Meghan was also the third person Frankie had told about the girl thing. The first two people had been her favourite war-torn Batman figurine, and God. Frankie had been the most nervous about God but everyone said prayers were for anything and she hadn't seen any locusts or bloody rivers around since she'd told Him, so she figured it must be okay. Batman, of course, hadn't cared one way or another. Batman was awesome.   
Meghan had been quiet for a minute after Frankie had told her. It made Frankie nervous. They'd both spent a little while kicking at the track they were flattening in the grass, and then she'd looked up and Meghan was looking at her, and the other girl had nodded. Just like that.  
She'd promised on her entire stuffed animal collection not to tell anyone else. When they'd had to go back inside she'd paused by the running track and hugged Frankie extra hard. Meghan gave better hugs than any other kid Frankie knew.

"Why'd you pick me?" Frankie had asked curiously one day, after that. They'd been standing in the bushes that grew wild next to the school, the ones that were covered in tiny yellow flowers you could chew on. Other kids had been all around them, plucking and tasting the blooms like farmers or bees, so Frankie wasn't worried they'd get kidnapped. She had twisted some of the thin branches into an 'F'. "To sit with when you got here, I mean."  
Meghan had picked at the bell-curve of a tiny flower until the stem showed, and then popped the whole thing in her mouth. They tasted like honey. "'Cause you had a bird shirt on," she'd said. "No one else in our class did."   
"Oh." The bluebird shirt had been a birthday present from her cousin. Frankie suddenly liked it a lot more.  
"I like birds," Meghan had added.   
Frankie had smiled. "I know."  
  
She was Frankie's best friend.  
  
She was the one that _stupid_ Tyler Hogan had been bothering for weeks now. Weeks. And none of the teachers had done anything when Meghan had told them. He was being  _creepy_.  He'd had to go down. So Frankie had yelled at him, and he'd yelled back, and then she'd hit him right in the nose. She didn't know if she'd actually almost broken it, but she hoped so.  
No way he'd be bothering Meghan anymore. Some recesses spent in the office didn't even matter if Meghan would be happier. Not really.  
Deep down under her guts where her heart lived, Frankie was sure that Meghan would fight someone for her, too. It'd just been Frankie's turn first.

 

While the car rolled up their cracked driveway Frankie's mom broke her thin-lipped silence to ban Frankie from going outside, watching any movies or TV, or playing her grandad's drums, all for a week. “And if you _ever, ever_ try that again--”  
Frankie nodded through the rant, not catching her mom's eye.  
She scurried inside at the first opportunity, sitting down at the kitchen table with her backpack up beside her and even pulling out her homework without having to be told.  
Her mom looked at her for a minute from the doorway, then sighed and left the room. A moment later the TV hummed on.  
  
  
The phone rang at seven-thirty on the dot. Frankie dived for it. “Hello?”  
“Hey Frankie, is she out?” Meghan asked immediately, voice hushed. Dishes clinked in the background on her side of the line. She was probably sitting under the counter in her kitchen; her parents didn't trust her with her phone in her room.  
Frankie's family had no such issues. Even better, she was alone in the house right now. She booked it down the hallway and shut the door to her room behind her before answering. “Hey! Yeah, you're right on time.”  
“Good,” Meghan said, pleased as ever that her schemes had worked out. “You okay?”  
“Yeah. Grounded, though. No TV or movies or instruments for a week.”  
“That _sucks_.”  
“It's not so bad.”  
“But you're allowed on the phone? Really?”  
Frankie looked at the window of her room, left wide open in a attempt to trick a breeze in. Her mom was smoking on their front steps. Frankie's voice wouldn't carry that far, right? She switched the phone to her right hand. “She didn't say I _wasn't_ allowed.”  
“I wish mine didn't say that.” Meghan's voice got muffled as she answered someone in the kitchen, and then she was back. “So thanks for recess.”  
“It's okay,” Frankie said. She grinned, a little red-faced, then looked down at her hand. Her knuckles were pretty red too but they didn't hurt anymore. “He deserved it.”  
“Totally deserved it,” Meghan agreed. “And he's not going to bother us again, right?”  
“Right. And,” Frankie added recklessly, “If he does, or if any of his friends do, I'll punch them out too.” She paused, looking toward the window again with her shoulders scrunched up. Just in case.  
The only sound was Meghan's awesome laugh, though. “You probably shouldn't,” she said finally. “Mrs Miller would hold you back if you get in trouble again.”  
Frankie snorted. “Probably. Or summer school, maybe.” She knew she wouldn't actually get tossed into summer school. For one, her mom would literally put her to death and then bury her in the yard, and for two her grades on tests had always been pretty good. Props to being a quiet reading kid in the classroom, she guessed.  
Meghan snorted right back at her in response. For a minute they just pretended to be pigs.  
“You won't get put into summer school, you're way too smart,” Meghan said after they got tired of the pig game. “And you have to hang out with me the whole time, how're you gonna do _that_ if you're inside with geometry and stuff?”  
“Yeah, I know.”  
"Yeah." Meghan paused. "Want to know something else?" She was talking quietly, sounding like she had a grin on her face.  
If Frankie was a dog her ears would've pricked. "Uh, obviously."  
“When you left I told everyone Tyler wet his pants after you punched him."  
Frankie brayed out loud, kicking her feet. “Really?! No way!”  
“Really!” Meghan laughed too. “Everyone’s gonna call him a baby when school starts again, and no one saw him but us, so he can’t say he _didn’t_ , if you say he did too.”  
“Of course I will! That’s amazing.”  Frankie craned her head to see out the window. Her mom was still sitting there, but she’d finished her smoke. It was a good time for precautions to be taken. “Hey, hold on?”  
“Sure.”  
Frankie pinched the phone between her shoulder and her neck, while pulling her window closed in fractions. Steady, steady. She was a PI. She was a _ninja turtle._  
  
  
Meghan waited until the weird squelching of the window stopped, then spoke seriously like she was making a promise. “In a month it'll be July and we won't have to see anybody we don't want to for the whole summer.”  
Yeah.  
_July_ had become a survival mantra for them. It was important for every kid in the school, obviously, except for the littlest ones who didn't know any better. But it was special between the two of them. One of Meghan's grandparents was close to passing on so Meghan's mom was going out to visit for the summer, and Meghan's dad worked days all the time, so Frankie could go over whenever she wanted and no one would bother them. No adults or sniffing teachers or jerk fifth graders. Nobody.   
“The whole summer,” Frankie echoed.  She took the handheld in her slightly achey left hand and flopped onto her bed to stare at the ceiling, the promise glowing in her head.

  
  
//


	2. Second Term, 1996

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains brief and non-graphic conversation sexualizing preteen girls.
> 
> //

  
They’d started it, alright? Three dudes from the football team lounging around the benches outside the school gymnasium like they were sitting on thrones. Of all the Breakfast Club shit, really. Frankie had never liked them to begin with.  
Then, while walking past after lunch, Frankie had overheard their 'conversation' about how Saint Mary Academy uniforms always stayed the same size but the curves in them got bigger. These were senior and junior year douchebags talking, guys on the edge of not needing fake IDs to buy their shitty beer. Some of the girls in Saint Mary's were barely twelve.

It was a matter of goddamn principle at that point, as Frankie explained thickly to her mother when she came to pick Frankie up from the office. Again.

Since it was Frankie's second offence at the private school, the (mostly useless) guidance counselor, lunch hour monitor, and school principal were involved in the meeting. There was a lot of babbling about how they appreciated that Frankie's family paid tuition here, and Frankie was a bright student, but this was becoming a _pattern of behaviour_ and they really can't stand for bullying; it was ungodly, among other things. The other participants' families would be within their rights to press charges, whatever.  
They all ignored the fact that all four “other participants” were twice Frankie's size, and had been talking irredeemably creepy shit, and had punched her back once they'd gotten over the shock of a sophomore tackling the fuck out of one of them. As far as the administration were concerned, Frankie had punched first so therefore everything else was irrelevant.  
And, hey-- she had done exactly that.  
Frankie sat in the office's only uncomfortable chair listening to the adults go over her 'prospects'. Her poor, careworn mom was using her lawyer-voice to say things like, “I understand," and, "I promise we will have a discussion about this. It can’t continue.” All of which meant bad news for Frankie and probably her tapes collection.  
Still, Frankie looked down at the small rust-coloured splats on her regulation jeans and blazer and tie. She grinned behind the paper towel pressed to her nose.  
It didn't matter whether or not the football guys tried to fight her from now on. She was shorter than them, younger, and not on steroids, and it was a matter of public record that she'd drawn blood first.  
_Eat that, you asshats._  
  
  
  
*

  
Years and years later, during her band’s first professional video shoot, she remembers that moment. It came back to her in full-colour detail while she's standing on a table in a really similar outfit to her old uniform, with a tech feeding a tube full of fake piss up her pant leg.  
Frankie shakes her head. “Mom, your baby's finally made it.”  
  
Her guys don't understand, but they laugh anyway.

 

**


	3. Late September, 2002

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: drinking, aggressive dudebros who want a girl's number, and brief misgendering.  
> //

  
If anyone asked she was definitely twenty-two.

Frankie had been riding pretty high to begin with, both literally and figuratively. Pencey Prep may have been a little on the rocks lately, but they'd _rocked_ that show. Everyone had just gotten off the stage, loud with adrenaline, soaked in other people's sweat and beer as much as their own. They'd descended on the bar like-- well, like them.

Frankie didn't keep edge but she tried to not get _too_ fucked up onstage, so that meant three beers max and no weed except for medicinal use, i.e. killing pre-show anxiety. But since it was after the show she was more than happy to take the blunt that Hambone had passed to her and inhale pretty damn deep. The world tended to lose its focus after a couple hits like that, and it did not disappoint this time.  
When the joint was used up she'd waved off her bandmates invitations to go grind up some people and stumbled, alone, around to the back of the place.

The bouncers and all let her pass by, knowing enough from the driver’s license she waved around mostly incoherently not to bother with carding 'the kid with the shitty hair'. Which, what the fuck ever. No one at the shows cared about her hairstyle.  
Besides, it was part of an experiment she'd made up when she graduated high school. Experiment: would she like long hair better than short hair, which she'd previously had her entire life. (Results: kinda. She'd learned she did like her hair long, and in the slightly-wavy in between stage of long and short, but it wasn't a huge revelation feeling.) She was _academic_ about this shit. Fuck what anyone said.  
Annoyance aside, her hair and ID made people leave her alone, which served her just fine.    
After a minute or so of wandering she'd found a closet-sized bathroom with a strictly decorative lock on the door. She used it, thankful it was such a small room because all she had to do was keep her foot braced against the door to keep it closed. When she’d finished she decided not to bother flushing. The sink's faucets looked like tetanus but someone'd thought to put hand sanitizer on the edge of the toilet's tank lid, so all in all it wasn't terrible. She'd dried her hands on her jeans and then opened the useless door, steadying herself on it.  
She was about to head off into the boozey dark and find her band again when, from the other end of the hallway, someone started yelling.  
  
  
Despite what people said about vegetarians being drooling naive babies, Frankie wasn't two hundred percent lovey-dovey or anything. She did however think of herself as a decent goddamn person. Hearing yelling at a show didn't necessarily mean what you thought it did, but it could just as easy mean something terrible, which a decent person did not wave off.  
None of this went through her hazy mind at the time; she just registered that whoever was yelling sounded upset, like real upset from something other than just the regular shoving or accidentally stealing of someone else's beer, and that could be bad.  
She went toward the sound.  
  
  
It led her out of the hallway, unevenly down a couple of stairs, into a propped-open door. She shoved it open all the way and stepped out to the alley outside of the bar.  
It was apparently the designated outdoor space for people who wanted to enjoy the bar's alcohol and the slowly easing early September heat. Probably illegal, but whatever. Everything glowed nice and orange from the streetlamps at either side of the block. The halogens buzzing above the door Frankie had just exited from gave a nice atmosphere of cheap bug zappers to the party.  
Frankie tottered down the couple concrete steps to the pavement, looking around for the person who needed help. She managed to spot them pretty quickly.   
  
There was a standoff going on at the far wall. An obviously underage kid was shaking on her grimy platforms, and a woman in a hoody beside her was visibly furious; they were both facing a big drunk dude who didn't literally reek but still had "douchebag" coming off of him in waves. More accurately, the dude was facing the girls. He had his hands up like he was going to shove the shaking kid over. Sweater Girl was not having any of that shit, and the poor kid was just saying over and over “I didn't say anything!” with a quaver in her loud, illegally drunk voice.  
“Hey!” Frankie shouted. She was aware that she sounded equally drunk, but oh well. She pushed herself through a few onlookers who didn't move when they heard her shout, and  within seconds into the actual fray. Spinning on her heel to face the douchebag may have been a bad move. She collected herself quickly.  “Wha' the-- the fuck is going on here? You're gonna hurt somebody.”  
“I'm not doing gonna do anything,” Douchebag said loudly. He had a beer bottle clutched in his left fist. Frankie eyed it in case he decided to swing. “I was jus' _askin',_ ” he hurled that word at the kid pointedly, “if she wanted to come over to my place, or if' I could just have her number. I bought her like three shots, it’s only fair.”  
“She doesn't owe you _shit_ and she said _no,_ ” Sweater Girl spat back. She held herself stiff, like she was seconds away from swinging at the guy even though he had at least a foot of height on her. “Not her fault you passed off your cash! Leave us alone!”  
Douchebag made a big show of waving his hands side to side. The almost-full beer sloshed menacingly. “'s rude leaving without even saying _thanks_.”   
Frankie realized at that moment how much of a closed-off space they were all in. The street of the bar was behind Douchebag's back; the other end of the alley only spilled out to a backlane, dark and muddy this time of night. The alley itself wasn't wide enough to run away in without risking someone grabbing you if they reached far enough. Douchebag might be making noise about being totally calm, but he'd trapped them on purpose.  
Frankie's fists clenched.  
He'd continued talking while the full situation had dawned on her: “Just your number! It's not so bad, is it?”  
“She said _no,_ ” Sweater Girl repeated herself tersely.  
She looked like she'd seen a few pits in her life; she could stand her own in a fight. But the young kid still just looked terrified and woozy. There was no chance the kid was getting away without someone taking her hand and catching her when she inevitably tripped in her huge-ass shoes. Sweater Girl obviously wasn't going to leave her. So both of them needed to be able to run at the same time. Frankie had no idea who, if anyone, the two of them had came with, and anyway there wasn't any time to call someone. Douchebag was going to run out of fake politeness real soon. All the onlookers were too out of it or too amused (jackasses) to offer any real help.  
The tilling machine in Frankie’s head ran all the numbers together and spat one precise result: _Well, fuck it._

  
Frankie sprung forward, not putting more thought into her movements than she had to; she stepped widely with her foot, catching it on the insole of Douchebag's sneakers so the momentum had nowhere to carry him but down. He hit the pavement like a sack of rocks, for a second too stunned to even howl.  
Frankie's head snapped towards Sweater Girl, who was staring between her and Douchebag with wide eyes. “Get the kid out of here!” She yelled.  
And that was about all she could get manage, because the dude on the ground stopped being stunned and got real belligerent drunk real fast.For a couple minutes-- it was hard to tell in the rush-- she had to focus on getting him the fuck off of her legs and then away from her windpipe while trying not to accidentally fucking suffocate him with a well-placed knee. Sure, she hated him on principle, but she wasn't a _murderer_.  
Her and Douchebag were doing an almost-actual-dance for a while, drunken people down the alley cheering them on. He kept ducking most of her punches, but enough hit that he was starting to look winded. Her hands fucking ached. If anything that just made her angrier: she couldn't not be able to play just because of one drunken _asshole._  
She finally managed to draw him away from the wall by the sides of the arms on his shirt, twirling him like a goddamn ballerina she never was; she was just letting go of him with her good hand to deliver a punch when she heard the dull crunch someone else doing it for her, from the other side of him.  
The guy dropped for the second time.  
Sweater Girl stood in his place, sweaty and radiant from the streetlights behind her, shaking out her hand that she must've just delivered a hell of a hook with. Behind her, some last drunk person let out a particularly loud _wooo!_  
Frankie was impressed, and said as much as she let go of the guy's (now ripped) shirt.  
“Let's get the fuck out before someone calls the fucking cops,” Sweater Girl replied.  


Frankie knew that her band will be waiting for her back in the bar, but honestly she's not the DD today and they're all grown-ass adults. Mostly. They can find their own way home. Besides, Sweater Girl could very well be the most adorable person Frankie had ever seen. She nodded and let Sweater Girl take her arm.  
Together they managed to weave their way through the venue crew and randoms without hitting anybody else. Frankie's adrenaline clarity was starting to fade, so she couldn't really tell who she knew and who she didn't. Not that it mattered. She straight-up ignored the people yelling for her. Instead she told her new companion, “I can't drive. I mean I _can,_ but I've been-- I've smoked a little. Tonight. And drank.”  
“I got that, yeah,” Sweater Girl replied with a snort, looking over her (pretty) shoulder. “Like I would let some random dude drive my car, anyway.”  
That stung sharply, but Frankie let it slide past so she could focus on her feet. They were starting to do the thing they did when she was high where they floated off like clouds unless she kept watch on them.

The car that Sweater Girl and her friend had apparently drove there was parked on the grass in front of the bar. It was a two-door red thing on the 'held together by rust' side of repair. But the doors and windows are whole and all the locks seemed to actually lock, so that's an automatic bonus over Frankie's first vehicle.  
Drunk kid was in the backseat, barely visible in the streetlight. She had her head resting on top of a schoolbag and her feet up on the seat beside her. Sweater Girl must've buckled her in already. Frankie felt a sense of peace looking at the kid, even with her stinging hands and the blood leaking from her nose. She'd done something good today.  
“Thanks for the ride,” she managed to say after tumbling into the passenger seat, giggling a little at the way the world spun as she sat up.  
“You helped us out,” Sweater Girl replied. She turned the car on and clicked her seatbelt shut in the same movement, and they were rolling backward down the small grassy slope onto the street. “Where can I drop you off?”  
“Uh, I forget--- no, no, I've got it. Main street.” Frankie really needed a better name for her short-term driving companion. Sweater Girl was too pretty and too close for Frankie to keep referring to her by her clothing. But she didn't want to be creepy about it. Really, she should introduce herself first. “'m Frankie,” she said, only slurring a little. “Frankie Iero.”  
Sweater Girl nodded. She finished reversing the car, shifting gears and punching forward with enough speed to put Frankie's back flat against the seat.  
Frankie laughed again.  
Sweater Girl grinned a little. It was a good look for her, Frankie thought, especially when her rub at her eye left her makeup a little smudged. Punk rock.   
She shot Frankie a sidelong look, raising a messy eyebrow. And Frankie is saying this shit out loud, of course. Of course.  
“Sorry.”  
She smirked. “No problem. I think yours' pretty punk rock too.”  
Frankie paused, pulling down the sun visor so she could look in the tiny plastic mirror attached to it. She didn't remember putting eyeliner on before the show but fuck if it's not right there. The blood from her nose was starting to dry and flake a little; punk rock as _shit._ She can work with it. She smiled at the reflection.

   
“My name's Jamia,” the beautiful girl said after a minute of road-quiet. “That's my cousin, in the back.”  
“You have a pretty name,” Frankie said, twisting against her seatbelt so she was facing Jamia's profile. Jamia scoffed, tapping on the turn signal.  
“I'm serious!”  Frankie rubbed her eyes. “And, uh, 'm glad you could get her out. Sorry there was such a shitty dude at the show, I'll try to do something.” Pencey didn't have _a lot_ of sway at the places they played, or anything, but they were big enough on the scene now that venues did at least some stuff for them if they asked. Got them extra drinks. Looked out for a couple of their guest list friends. Next time Frankie'd requisition some bouncers to watch out for creepy dudes hitting on kids too young for them, especially if they followed them outside. Shows weren't a place to get coddled but people shouldn't have to worry about shit like _that_.  
“Thanks.” Jamia looked over at her. “And you guys are alright. I liked the second song.”  
“Thanks,” Frankie replied, pleased.  
“You'd play better without that shitty rats' nests getting in your face,” Jamia said. Her eyes were bright like a fox's.  
With anybody else, at any other time, Frankie would've flipped them a finger. As it was she just giggled again, leaning her head on the window.  
  
  
“Main street, huh?” Jamia said after another couple of minutes of avoiding potholes and the drunk pedestrians spilling out of bars. Only the kid's mumbled sleep-words in the backseat had broken the otherwise comfortable silence.  
“Huh?” Frankie lifted her head off of the window, clearing her eyes. She was getting a bit less buzzed now, and the tired was setting in. “Oh, yeah, if you can.”  
“What's on Main for you?”  
“Bus stop,” Frankie said. “My apartment's on the other side of town. My band drove over here, we're—or, we were gonna crash at someone's closer place.”  
Jamia nodded. She glanced at Frankie and then back at the road. “My place is on Graham. 's a lot closer than across town.”  
Frankie paused, then concentrated for a second, pulling up her internal map of avenue bends and bus lanes. Yeah, it definitely was closer. And significantly cozier, if Jamia was implying what Frankie was pretty damn sure she was.  
Still. She glanced over her shoulder to the backseat, where the teenager was  passed right out. “Does she have somewhere to go?”  
“She's staying for the weekend,” Jamia said. “But I've got a couch that fits her fine. We can share the bedroom until tomorrow?” She raised her eyebrows.  
Well. The night was going even better than she'd felt earlier. Frankie tried to smile as smoothly and coolly as she could. “Yeah, totally. I mean-- if it's cool with you, I'd love to spend the night.”  
“It's cool with me,” Jamia confirmed, and she smiled back. She had a beautiful smile.

 

*


	4. The Dark Spring Tour Of The Soul, 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: non-graphic drug use, drug addiction, vomiting, self-harm via punching the shit out of walls.  
> //

Without the gin she would have probably been okay. Frankie had drank the whole double when it’d been handed to her, though, and she’d drank the vodka-heavy screwdriver and two beers before that too. None of it helped the bitterness of having seen Gerard leaning over the sink in the bathroom, putting their gas money up his nose again. She’d shouted at him, but did it make any difference?  
Gin was a terrible thing for a human to have in their system. Having it made Frankie an angry drunk. The whole band’s been angry a lot, these days, and she’d had absolutely enough of shit blowing up in her face. She’s had enough.  
Someone’s banal cheering makes her head ring and it’s the last straw. Her throat and her stomach hurt. She slammed the last shot of the vile shit down and it fell out of her hand and out of her sphere of things she gave a fuck about as she got up from the bar. It wasn’t even a bar, not really, just a room in a building that had bottles and a mini-fridge. The glass sounded like it might’ve shattered, but by that point she was already out the damn door.  
  
  
  
The cold outside air bit at Frankie’s face and exposed hands. They clench into fists without her even realizing. There were kids still camping out somewhere to the right of the building so Frankie swung a hard left. She walked as fast as she could, glaring at any security who looked like they might want to follow her. Her eyes were stinging.  
  
God, but she hated him sometimes. It wasn’t even the money, not really, because the label paid for shit like gas and merch and _booze_ for them now, so what Gerard got high off of was his own goddamn prerogative as far as management seemed to be concerned. Not that it was their fault. Gerard was a grown-ass man and he could make his own shitty, stupid, irresponsible decisions.

 

Something hit the side of Frankie’s foot and without even thinking she kicked outward so hard her entire spine jolted.   
Her chucks barely grazed the side of the rock the second time and rage spiked in her chest. “Fuck!” Frankie shouted, then stood still for a minute, clenching her hands in her hair.  
When she looked up again she realized she had no idea where she was. It seemed like she'd found herself in the loading dock of the venue. Closed roll-up bay doors sat in a concrete wall about six feet off the ground, and there was absolutely no signage anywhere. The building was a faded orange, like high school bricks.   
Frankie hated it, suddenly and completely. She hated the rock and the building and the sky without any light and the city beyond it. Frankie leaned down and grabbed the jackass rock with her hand, flinging it as hard as she could at the building. It made a solid _thud._ Not as big as she would’ve liked. Without thinking Frankie followed it with her fist. “Fuck you,” she snarled.  
She was so tired. She wanted to go home.  
Frankie missed Jersey with a longing so complete it was like a shower drain in the middle of her soul sucking all the joy from life. She missed Jamia. She missed her home and her girl and her _band,_ what they had all been together before their drummer got to be an asshole and their lead singer apparently got to be a person who did fucking cocaine in the fucking bathroom of a fucking middle-of-nowhere venue with no concern over who the fuck made the stuff or where the fuck they got it or what the fuck they cut it with even though he could fucking _die_ so easily if any of that was fucked up, like he didn’t know how many people fucking cared about him, like _he_ didn’t care.  
She punched the wall again and kicked it for good measure. The stinging had turned onto to full-on tears and she didn't even give enough of a damn to hide them.

 

She didn’t know how long she was out there, but--  
  
“Frankie?”  
She turned around. Mikey’s slightly-stoned-but-definitely-worried self hovered a couple feet behind her, hand held half-out uncertainly.   
He was a different kid than he had been a year ago. He’d grown out of his 'baby lesbian' face into someone more pinched, more reserved when he wasn't wasted. Mikey frowned at Frankie, blearily shoving his bangs out of his eyes. All the gel he'd put in it earlier had been sweated out during the show. “Frankie? Are you fighting the wall?”  
“It was looking at me sideways,” Frankie said. Lucky her, her rage-adrenaline-whatever-the-fuck high was fading and she was sobering up at the same time. Her knuckles were starting to sting with a vengeance. She cradled her right hand with her left elbow, wiping her face on her t-shirt sleeve.  
Mikey’s eyes narrowed in confusion. "Why're you out over here?"  
Frankie shrugged and didn’t meet his gaze. She looked across the asphalt of the parking lot-slashing-loading-dock instead. The whole place was empty except for the two of them and the streetlights. There weren’t even any seagulls pecking at cigarette butts. In the night it was way quieter than Frankie’s head. It'd be enough to make a lady panic again. “Shit," she mumbled. She shut her eyes and sucked breath in through her teeth. (It ached, a little. She’d been flaking on brushing nightly.)  
"You alright?"  
“Yeah. Fine," she told the cracks in the ground. "How’s everybody back there?”   
“He’s in bed,” Mikey replied. “Everybody else is in the bus too. Worm said we’re leaving in ten.”   
And Mikey had come out looking for her. Well, now Frankie felt guilty on top of the churning awfulness and possible goddamn scum-sucking broken knuckle.  
She looked at him properly and tried to cough up something like a smile. Failing that, she just nodded. 

  
They started back to the bus together. The closer they got the more Frankie’s feet started to ache, even worse than her hands, and the more Mikey seemed to draw into himself. The whole tour had been hard on everybody, but especially Mikey. He’d gotten wrung out.  (Gerard, by contrast, had been looking more and more drowned.) Frankie couldn't imagine what it must be like in his brain.  
She put her left arm around his shoulders. "You're a good friend," she said quietly.   
Mikey sagged into the touch. He looped his spindly spaghetti arm around her, too, squeezing a little too tight for him to be okay.

He helped hold her up a couple minutes later when she puked over a sewer gate. Fuck gin. Honestly.

 

//


	5. Post-Warped, 2005

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: brief mention of alcohol drinking, that one douchebag at family gatherings.  
> ///

It'd been a weird summer. The sudden fucking skyrocket of _Revenge_ , all the new fans and press that'd come with it. Whatever the fuck had went down with Wentz. Gerard's sobriety, which wasn't new anymore but still felt fragile to Frankie, not in Gerard himself but in the atmosphere, a little twinge of strain on day to day tour survival. Plus Bob working out his space in the band, and double-plus the documentary interviews and cameras everywhere. _That_ especially. Frankie didn't mind the idea of a documentary one way or the other, but she was alright with it being over now.  
After all of that and the usual constant emotional output of performance, getting off tour was a relief.

Tour ended in August. Frankie's internal compass and calendar were both far too fucked over to remember the exact place or date, only that it'd _finished._ Her and the guys had taken the first plane out of whatever balls-hot state they'd last played in-- maybe Cali?-- and landed in Jersey around ass o'clock in the morning. They all hugged it out at the departure gate and then peeled off in separate directions, waving goodbyes. Bob had gotten on a connecting flight back to Chicago; the others had met up with whoever it was that was picking them up from the airport.

Frankie had taken her backpack and suitcase and gotten on a public bus outside the terminal, going all the way to the back to get the good seats.

She'd managed about twenty minutes staring out the window at her city rolling by before giving up and pulling her phone out to message Mikeyway. As a band they'd instituted a “no texting for 24 hours” rule in the hopes that they could actually wrangle some sleep out of the post-tour vacation, but whatever. He needed her support, she thought, even though in true Mikey fashion he hadn't actual said shit at the time, too focused on other people’s problems to ask for help with his own. Among other things.

Frank didn't admit this to herself very loudly, and wouldn’t at all if someone asked her, but part of the reason she was so glad to be off tour was because she was glad to be away from her band. All their addictions and weird simmery heartbreak and grudges and, well, _drama.  
_ She loved the hell out of Ray and Mikey and G, and she was beginning to love Bob a whole lot too, but being right up in their issues one-hundred-percent of the time got real draining.

The mostly-empty public bus she was on was the first time she'd been alone in months. She pocketed her phone and made sure to enjoy the breathing space.

 

From the bus she went to the downtown terminal where she transferred to a second bus crosstown, got off at Main street, walked four blocks and was finally, finally home.

Home: a noun which recently had come to mean three locks on a door three floors from the street, framed posters all over the thin walls inside, a corner specifically for her guitars, two stumbly loud-ass adorable terriers, and best of all Jamia. Jamia with her puffy early-morning eyes and her fastidiousness about where the chairs went and her shitty job that she had to sleep for and couldn't pick Frankie up at the airport, and her gorgeous tired smile when she opened the door to Frankie's exhausted, grinning face.  
Frankie hugged her lady where they met by the door, went to the bathroom to brush her teeth real quick and then came back to kiss her for a solid five minutes, just leaning up on the closed doorframe. Three months was a long time to be apart. _Jamia_.

Jamia, who among other lovely things, pulled back after making out and said, “Welcome home, Jess, I missed you,” into Frankie’s hair as casually as anything.

The name’s an experiment, just between them. Frankie had came out to Jamia after they'd been dating for a year or so. (It’d been a transitional period in their relationship. Frankie had laughed herself out of a panic attack and then almost back into one when she'd thought of it like that.) Not telling people about herself was something Frankie was used to, and she did feel safer that way; but Jamia not _knowing_ felt suffocating.  
Frankie had been shaking when she’d told her. It’d been a year with Jamia and already Frankie couldn’t imagine life without her, if it went wrong.  
It hadn’t went wrong. Jamia had waited until she’d finished talking, put her careful hand on Frankie’s shoulder and then kissed her square on the mouth. She’d promised she was just as happy with a girlfriend as otherwise and then kissed Frankie again. She’d graciously held Frankie close when she’d proceeded to cry all over her girlfriend’s shoulder for about ten minutes solid.  
Jamia had apologized, later, for having talked about Frankie wrong all this time. She’d asked if Frankie had wanted her to use a different name.

The thing was, Frankie liked her own name. Sure, she’d thought of different ones when she was a little kid-- she’d liked Rachel, for example (because Batman), and then Lois from TMNT for a while. But that’d dropped off when she was old enough to be in middle school. ‘Frankie’ was in her family. It’d been through worse shit than she ever had. It connected her to some of the greatest men she knew in her life, and all the Ieros before her. It felt safe.

And it _was_ safe, in a different way than legacy. ‘Frank’ didn’t sit with her well, but people would call a Frank ‘Frankie’ without a second thought. Like Mikey was technically a Michael, but no one gave a fuck about the non-diminutive.

She wasn’t out to anybody except Meghan, Jamia, and that one Batman figurine who now lived on her bookshelf. She’d used ‘Frankie’ her entire life. She wasn’t ready to be called anything _but_ Frankie in public.  
But she was maybe ready to try something in her own home.  
So, Jess. She liked it as much as she liked Frankie, maybe more. Jess sounded like kind of a butch lady who worked as a bartender and smoked half a pack a day. Or wore her hair short and played guitar in a rock band. She liked that it was short and to the point (like her!), and the rounded end to it, and the ‘J’ at the beginning. How it fit with Jamia’s so easily.

Jamia said, “Welcome home Jess, I missed you,” and Frankie’s little heart flip-flopped in her chest and grew three sizes. She’d missed hearing that. She’d missed Jamia entirely.

They kissed some more.

  
After that Jamia had to start getting ready for work and Frankie had to lay down before she fell the fuck down, so they squeezed hands and parted for the day.  
By the time time Frankie woke up again it was evening. She rolled out of bed and found her wonderful girlfriend in the kitchen, throwing a microwaveable dinner into the appliance in question. When she saw Frankie coming she smiled. It was worth it, having spent the first day without her, because her sleepy-eye was gone and Frankie herself could actually move under the power of her own two feet to go over and peck her on the cheek.

They ate their radiation-dinners together on the counter, then went and showered together, had a couple rounds of enthusiastic I-missed-you-and-wow-dry-spells-suck sex ( _sorry neighbours,_ Frankie had thought not sincerely at all), then showered again. Afterwards they fell asleep curled up on the ratty couch that took up most of their living room, because neither of them felt like tossing the linens in the laundry or sleeping on dirty sheets.   
The dogs yipped quietly to themselves, piling on together by the end of the sofa. Frankie pet Mama absentmindedly with her foot. She smiled and snuggled her face into Jamia's hair. Home was good.

 

 

Being off the road was strange at first, but a _fucking good_ kind of strange. Frankie can get REM sleep for once, make her own meals with actual soy milk, and take two quick showers a day like a modern woman. She adopts a 'fifties housewife' voice whenever she's going in and out of the shower with her towels, calling it out like she's going to market or whatever.

Jamia humours her. She calls her “Jess” casually when she’s waking her up for coffee or organizing who’s going to take the puppies to their vaccination appointments. A little bloom of happiness shows up in Frankie’s chest every time.

After a couple weeks the strangeness wears off, leaving just the _good._ She reads, spends time with the dogs, checks out guitars online, emails Toro and Bryar and texts the Ways, hangs out with her Jersey friends, writes some melodies. She watches horror movies, plays board games, and has plenty of enjoyable sex with her awesome girlfriend, sometimes in that order.  
Given the temperature outside and their broken AC, Jamia has chosen to go shirtless inside their apartment most of the time. It's really fucking hot, which is a double entendre Frankie delights in.

She told Jamia that one day when she was about to take the dogs out for a walk. In response, Jamia had leaned into their buildings’ hallway with an open book clasped over her naked tits (gotta preserve modesty in public) to tell Frankie what a “huge fucking lesbian” she was— much to the wide eyed stares of their next door neighbours, who were both easily in their fifties.

Frankie had spent the first half of the route around their apartment block giggling to herself. Bella and Mama didn’t get the joke, but they seemed happy enough, as they usually were when they got to go outside and have someone pick up their poop.

Even cleaning up literal dog shit was okay when it was surrounded by the other stuff. This was her life at home, and Frankie would hold onto it with both hands while she could.

 

*

  
In the middle of October temperatures dropped sudden and sharp. Frankie and Jamia got plenty of practice kissing the cold off of each other's faces. They stayed inside more, except for needed excursions, which meant more sex and more board game marathons. 

They took a trip out to the West coast to see a couple friends, and while they were there they adopted a new dog. They named her Sargeant Peppers, Peppers for short. She was a twitchy shivering white-furred thing, the third sweetest being in the house behind Mama and Jamia.   
Once they got back to Jersey the other pups sniffed at her curiously, ignored her for two weeks, and then got along like family. A loud, snuffling, scrabbling family. Frankie fucking loved dogs.

  
It had been two months since tour, which meant halfway through the 'usual' downtime for huge bands like they apparently were now, so the label was starting to politely request that My Chemical Romance get their collective asses together about recording their next release. Frankie started spending a lot of time on the phone and emailing. Gathering intel, mostly, which meant listening to a long string of Gerard’s Ideas (TM).  
For this new album Gerard was thinking in grand gestures and orchestras, a stage production. Something beautiful, huge, Victorian gothic. He'd actually talked the Warners people around to letting them write it in this out-of-the-way mansion in Los Angeles. A place huge, dark, and isolated, to fit the concept to a T.  
“It'll be pure,” he said. His voice echoed down the line thinly, intense as it always got when he was talking about capital-a Art. Frankie could hear him inhaling a cigarette and waving his hands. “Epic. We're going to Thoreau this shit, Frankie.” His vision was a burning glass, the kind that ignited small insects under its sight.  
  
Frankie wasn't an ant. Still, talking to Gerard made her nervous.  
The album didn’t scare her, she liked the idea of the album-- they'd been hashing out demo tracks back when documentary cameras had been following them around on the bus, and they were pretty solid beginnings if Frankie did say so herself. She didn’t mind the extra fuss around concept and presentation, either. She was okay with the stage shows that My Chem had become known for, that 'theatre element'. The makeup could be fun. Uniforms were interesting; Gerard always held more stock in clothes than she did, but it always looked good. She trusted whatever G and their costume designer came up with (though it was bizarre, how quickly Frankie had become used to the idea of her band having their own professional costume designer.)  
No, what made her go quiet at the end of a long phone call was the fact that all of them had had a hard time of it the past summer. Gerard hadn't been sober for that long, relatively speaking; Mikey neither, and neither of them were known for being the most stable of people. God knew that Bob, Ray and Frankie herself had their own demons. And soon they were all going to be hauled up, like marionettes, out of their lives and into the fucking mountains of Los Angeles to court ghosts. She'd looked up the mansion Gerard was set on them living in while they wrote the album. That shit was as haunted as anything she'd ever seen.  
It just gave her a bad feeling. She didn’t know if Gerard understood what he was pulling all of them into.

She _would_ go, though. Anxiety or not. It wasn't even really a question. On a practical level she needed the continued income, of course. But deeper down, behind her guts, she needed to keep playing music with the guys. She missed them. And she wasn't about to leave her band to deal with a fucked-up devil's mansion _alone_.  
  
  
All in all the October phone calls sucked. Especially for her attempt to quit smoking. Frankie would hang up and then stare at a wall for a while, feeling her guts churn unpleasantly.

But then Jamia would wordlessly pass her a cup of ginger tea, if she was home, and the warm-spice would settle Frankie’s stomach. Or if Jamia wasn’t home, Frankie would make herself some tea and practice breathing exercises. In, out.  
Eventually the dogs would need attention, or there'd be lunch to make or laundry to do. And then Jamia would get home with a story about someone at work being a asshole for Frankie to laugh at, or even just with her beautiful face and disgruntled attitude for Frankie’s nonsense, and Frankie would lean on her shoulder and laugh anyway. Normality would push out the pressing sense of foreboding.  
The world inevitably bent a little out of shape during the phone calls, but then real life re-asserted itself, and it bent back.  
When Frankie’s birthday rolled around it was great and not suitable for under-age audiences. She didn't think of ghosts at the end of it, only promises.

 

*

 

The first morning of November came all over everything. Frankie woke with her face pushed against the crook of Jamia's armpit, and when she sat up, the snow and white sky outside their bedroom window almost burned out her eyes for a second. After she put her hands down she just blinked, childhood awe taking over.  
In the living room the dogs were as surprised as her. All three of them were taking turns trying to bounce their forepaws up onto the sill behind the couch, pressing their twitchy noses against the now fogged-up glass.

Frankie and Jamia took them for their walk together that morning. They hadn’t been outside for five minutes when Peppers leaped into a mini-snowbank, and then leaped right back out, shivering convulsively. Both Frankie and Jamia paused for a split second and then almost tripped over each other on the sidewalk, laughing for longer than was strictly kind.

Peppers would remain perturbed (twelve points in Scrabble, hell yes) for the next few weeks. The snow kept coming down.

  
On Thanksgiving Jamia and Frankie bundled themselves up, dressed a little nicer under their fall gear than they otherwise would, and then at the last minute packed the dogs up too since it would be wrong to leave them by themselves on a family holiday. They all got into Jamia's slightly shitty work car and drove to Frankie's old neighbourhood for supper. Thanksgiving with the Ieros and Christmas with the Nestors, disregarding any tours or catastrophes. It was a tradition.  
When they got to Frankie’s mom's the sky was already getting dark. They parked as close as they could to the house, which wasn’t actually that close because all the other people’s families were also parking as close as they could. “Fuck literally all of these people,” Frankie said when they got out of the car.  
“That’d take a lot of time, babe,” Jamia replied, wrestling with Bella’s doggy-seatbelt. Frankie laughed.

The five of them walked fast. Dogs really were adorable little heat packets, Frankie thought warmly. Mama and Peppers sent up puffs of warm dog-breath into her face as they squirmed in her arms.   
As if she could hear the thought, Bella barked joyfully from Jamia's shoulder, where J had put her in a modified firefighter’s carry after the first block. Jamia hushed her before she started a howl. Frankie giggled again.

  
Finally they arrived at Frankie’s childhood home. Even from outside the house it was obvious it was full. When Frankie tried the front door anyway, a small mountain of boots and winter shoes blocked it halfway. She closed it with a shrug and opened the shitty fence gate into the backyard instead.  
  
Her and Jamia stepped through the gate into a maelstrom of children. There were at least ten of them all together, from kindergarteners to at least two who were in high school. Some were cousins or niblings of Frankie, some were spawned from long-time family friends, and some just looked to be neighbours' kids who had come along for the camraderie. They ran up and skidded down the small hills of packed snow, yelling to each other and occasionally shrieking fit to burst eardrums in the slowly settling light.  
How prepared the kids were for the weather was roughly correlated to age. The teenagers' only concession to the cold were a couple toques and pairs of flimsy mitts, while the littlest ones were stumbling puffballs peeking out of scarves.  
Frankie's heart squeezed a little, looking at the five and six year olds with their matching gloves and winter jackets. Jamia and her hadn't talked about plans to have kids yet but they both agreed on wanting them, someday.  
The kids didn’t seem to notice the sudden arrival of two adults in their midst, which sent off a panic alarm at the back of Frankie’s head. She buried her face in Peppers’ warm side for a second. When she looked back up she saw her nineteen-year old cousin Maria leaning against the post right beside the fence gate, her arms crossed over her chest defensively. She caught Frankie’s eyes and smiled just a fraction, waving with one (bare and cold-looking) hand.  
Frankie exhaled.  
  
In the back corner of the yard, someone had thoughtfully scraped clear the snow and installed a dog spike. Frankie helped Jamia secure the pups to it with their leashes, and then stepped back. Adults showing up were one thing, whereas dogs were entirely different. The kids beelined for them like gravity had shifted. Bella and Mama leaped around happily. Peppers was shaking so hard from joy with all the pettings it seemed like she was going to explode. Frankie sent Mikey a picture of the whole thing with her cellphone (after fiddling with it for a minute).  
A couple of the younger kids squealed and ran up to Frankie and Jamia once they realized who the dog-bringers were. Frankie picked them up and spun them around with airplane noises. Jamia, laughing, did the same beside her.

When they were tired out, they set the smallest kids down carefully and waved goodbye to everybody.  
They passed Frankie’s uncle Vinnie sitting by the door, where he’d been hidden from sight before, and shook hands hello with him. “Making sure nobody get a concussion,” he explained with a gesture at the kids sliding down the snowhills right by his feet. Frank and Jamia laughed.   
They trooped into the house, moving around the battered plastic table with covered dishes placed outside the back door. Frankie caught Jamia's expression as they went inside; her eyes were soft as Frankie's own. The squeeze on Frankie's heart grew a little tighter. Someday.

  
  
The back door led directly into the kitchen. Inside the house was hot and loud, full of warm light and people. The mix of the crowd was similar to the kids outside: some were Frankie’s family, some were long-time family friends, some seemed to be guests invited along. It got clear really fast why the kids had been left in the yard. Cigarette smoke hung heavily in the air, sticking to everything. Frankie wasn't too bothered. She'd lived on fucking Warped Tour, at least she was reasonably sure the stuff in here was legal.  
Dozens of full serving dishes wafted deliciously from the counter and the stovetop. Frankie held hands with Jamia as they sidled their way through the crowd like fans at a show, picking up cups and plates that they filled as they went.

After making their first circuit they looped back to the corner by the entrance to score some forks, which they’d forgot. In addition to cutlery they found Frankie’s dad and two of Frankie's uncles, as well as Dave, one of her dad’s colleagues from work. Frank Sr. broke off the conversation to smile broadly at Frankie and hug her with one strong arm. He smelled like a chimney but that, at least, was hereditary.  
Frankie let him kiss her forehead with a grin and then turned to her uncles for hugs, shaking hands with Dave. From behind her she heard her dad exclaim how good it was to see Jamia again.  
It was nice having Jamia and her parents continue to get along so well. Frankie and her hadn’t talked about marriage, yet, but… it was an idea.  
  
  
Shortly after they’d bowed out of conversation with Frank Sr., Frankie caught sight of Meghan at the full dining table and went over to hug her hello. Jamia followed her, with a grin. The two of them made friendly small talk while Frankie went off to hunt for two more of the veggie cabbage rolls she'd grabbed first and now they all wanted to try. By the time she got back Meghan was outlining in detail every stupid infraction she could remember that had gotten Frankie sent to the office when they were little kids, and Jamia was laughing.  
“I don’t have to share these with you, y’know,” Frankie said, holding up the newly-plated cabbage rolls with one hand.  
(She did anyway.)

  
Frankie’s mom was on the couch in the living room with a glass of wine when Frankie and Jamia finally made their way over to her. A couple of uncles and spouses were sitting there already, but they bowed out when Linda looked up to see her child and future-daughter-in-law standing with grins on their face. (Perks of being an only kid with a scary mom, as Frankie would tell Jamia later.)  
When her mom kissed her cheek the twenty-three previous Thanksgivings' washed over Frankie in a clustered sense-memory as timeless and worn through as the couches down in the basement. Her and Jamia set their drinks on the coffee table in front of the couch and balanced their plastic plates and cutlery carefully on their laps. Then she kissed her mom's cheek right back.  
“How've you been?” Her mother asked earnestly, as she sat back against the couch with minimal wheezing. She squeezed Frank's cheek for good measure. A couple of the younger adults that were clustered around snickered. “I haven't heard from you since you got off the road, what've you been up to.”  
“Fine. Relaxing,” Frankie answered honestly, then grinned.  
Linda's eyebrows went up. “I _see._ So that's why I haven't been able to get a hold of you?” Everyone who was nearby who hadn't laughed before did now, including Frankie's mom herself. Linda had the same croaky laugh that she'd had since Frankie was twelve and after not hearing it for so long it was kind of great. Linda took a sip of her drink and leaned forward a little to see Jamia, who was sitting on Frankie's right. “How about you hon?”  
“I'm alright,” Jamia said easily. “My job's off for the holiday, Frankie and the dogs have been keeping me busy at home.”  
“And how many do you have now?”  
“Three,” Frankie confessed. Jamia leaned warmly into her side and she put her arm around her girlfriend's shoulders while everyone around them tittered again.  
“You need to stop having such a soft heart if you’re ever gonna have kids, Frankie,” someone said warmly.   
  
Frankie smiled in their vague and direction and shrugged. Turning the conversation away from their now-infamous dog collecting skills, she picked up her plastic fork with her other hand and tapped a piece of cooked vegetable mass on her plate. Probably vegetables anyway. It was a little hazy in the room but, even without that, she couldn’t really tell what it was. “So what's this? You've been cooking up the hopes of the neighbourhood again?”  Her mother had, without fail, dressed as a witch during Halloween since Frankie was five.  
Linda laughed her croaky laugh again. “No, no, it's just sweet potatoes and cauliflower.”  
Frankie had never been particularly hot on vegetables straight up like this, but it'd also been a long time and she was getting a little social-burnt out, so an excuse for silence was welcome. Thankfully, now that she'd said hello to her mom she was pretty much home free. She mentally shrugged and stuck a generous portion of the deep orange on her fork.   
Jamia's plate clinked gently onto the coffee table beside hers, as her girlfriend started up a conversation with the people around them to cover for her silence. _Teamwork,_ Frankie thought happily, and smiled into her yam mash.

It was all so amazingly pleasant that maybe Frankie should've expected the bullshit that followed. Her and J and her mom were in the middle of a good conversation about the neighbourhood when someone said, “Hey, a beautiful woman you’ve got there, eh? Nice work.”  
Frankie looked up from her half-finished plate, for a second just pure surprise that someone was talking to her other than her mother. In the interim of their conversation with her mom the room around the couch had cleared a little, some of the people going out onto the front lawn in search of fresher air to have their cigarettes. The guy had plopped himself down on a recently-vacated chair, a half-drunk Molson in his hand.  
With an unimpressed lurch Frankie realized it wasn’t even a friend of a friend, but her uncle, Nathan. He’d been okay at family dinners and such until Frankie was old enough to recognize the looks that the other family members had gave him after the third glass of wine.  
She felt Jamia stiffen beside her, just slightly. A slow anger was building up in Frankie, too, starting low on her spine, and helped by the beer she herself was finishing. She took another drink since it was in her hand, and then set it carefully down in front of her. “What?” She said.  
“Leave us alone, Nathan,” her mom said beside her, sounding almost bored. “We’re having a lovely conversation and I don’t want you coming along and spoiling it.”  
Nathn scoffed. “Can’t a gentleman compliment a lady?” He drawled.  
_No,_ Frankie thought immediately. Beside her, Jamia said out loud, “Definitely not like that.”  
The drunk-smile slid off Nathan’s face like slime off a wall.

Frankie eyed the bottle in his hands and abruptly remembered an alley, almost four years ago. She looked sideways at Jamia, who was glaring at the man now like she had that other douchebag then. She was indeed beautiful and she could prove it with a hell of a right hook. Frankie smiled at her, just a little.  
“C’mon,” Nathan started up again. “Frankie, ‘re you telling me you don’t think she’s beautiful?” He tried to wheedle.  
Frankie resisted the urge to shudder from the crawl over her skin. Nothing about social interactions like this was particularly fun for her, but one of the worse parts was how everyone always acted like she was One Of The Guys. The hetero, hetero dudes. It even happened with her own band, sometimes. And Frankie herself wasn’t a saint, she’d said and done tons of shitty things in her life. But at least she owned up to it. At least she didn’t creep around Thanksgiving reunions sliming all over women who were just trying to enjoy their damn meals. “I think you shouldn’t talk to her if she doesn’t want you too,” she said.  
Nathan let out a literal, drunk guffaw. If Frankie was three years younger and had a couple beers she would’ve tackled this guy to the floor right here in the living room by now. No one else seemed to notice, or be doing anything. Frankie’s mom had her head propped up on one of her hands.  
“She can tell me to leave if she doesn’t want,” Nathan said. “Right, sweetheart?”  
“Did already,” Jamia said, rolling her eyes. She took another sip of her drink.  
“Yeah,” Frankie backed her up. “You need your ears cleaned, man,”  
  
Nathan frowned and actually swore at her, out loud. And really, _really,_ Frankie would’ve hit him by now if she was anywhere but in her mom’s living room. On one hand she was old enough and sober to know better, but on the other hand, fuck _that_.  
As it was, she carefully set her plate down beside her drink on the table. “Do you want to talk about this outside?” She fake-asked, as diplomatically as she could. Part of her was hoping Nathan would agree.  
Nathan spread his hands wide. Why was it that all drunk douchebags seemed to have a similar set of moves they’d do? “I don’t want any trouble,” he said.  
“Then don’t say any _bullshit,_ ” Frankie snapped back.

  
At that, Nathan stood up. He was almost six feet and it was noticeable in the crowded room. “We should take this outside,” he said, “’Changed my mind.”  
Frankie stood up, too. “Meet you out there,” she said in something that was not quite a snarl.  
Nathan turned and weave-stomped his way out of the room. There was a muted rumble as he kicked over the congested collection of shoes, winter boots and sneakers from the front matt, and then a crash as he slammed the door behind him. It actually muted the general party noise for a second.

Frankie turned around and leaned over the couch, grabbing the curtains to pull them closed across the window. Then she got up and followed the path that Nathan’s drunken wake had made through the party. She stepped over all the shoes, went up to the door, and flipped shut the deadlock.

 

Frankie returned to the couch and sat down with a relieved sigh, picking up her drink. After a sip she turned to her long-suffering mother and gave her a hug as an apology.  
  
Her mom accepted the hug and then waved Frankie off. She was, surprisingly, smiling a little. “You don’t think he’ll get in by the backyard?” She asked.  
“Nah, Uncle Vinnie’s out there. And Maria’s watching the gate. She’ll be able to tell he’s hammered,” Frankie said. “She won’t let him around the little ones like that.”  
“She’s a good kid,” Frankie’s mom agreed. Then she leaned forwards slightly. “Some things never change, hon,” she advised Jamia.  
“I know,” Jamia said. She looked like she always did when Frankie did something ridiculous; a little proud, not at all surprised, and a little like she was laughing at her girlfriend on the inside. She took a sip of beer from Frankie’s glass and then kissed Frankie on the mouth.  
Someone in the far corner of the room cheered.

 

///


	6. June, 2010

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> //

They make an album and then scrap it. Bob leaves, and they fire Brian without barely even talking to him, and everything seems like it’s falling apart. But in the middle of it Gerard had a Lindsey-inspired epiphany in the desert and he comes back talking about colour, celebration, rebellion and rebirth.  
It has a way of getting into a person's head. And fuck it. Fuck it. She can’t make this recording any worse by coming out to her band.

Frankie knows she doesn’t have to tell them, or anyone at all, if she doesn’t want to.  
She does want to.

In a little under two years the lead singer of Against Me! will publicly come out as trans, too. Frankie already has some of Against Me's albums on her computer but after Laura's interview drops she will spend an hour buying all the physical copy CDs, vinyls and t-shirts of Laura's band's that exists, and then she'll spend another hour crying actual sobs. She won’t know if she’s crying for happiness, relief, fear, or all three and more together. It’ll all get caught in her stomach. She’ll muffle her tears in her shirt because the girls are sleeping downstairs and the very last thing Frankie wants to do is wake them up. The dogs will jump around her feet in concern. She'll try and nudge them to show she's okay, to mixed success.  
Eventually Jamia will venture up to the office-space and hold Frankie, kiss her hair, but not ask why or tell her to calm down, and Frankie will love her so much she thinks her heart will pop.  
It's not a personal reaction exactly. She's never spoken to Laura for longer than a minute, at some award show or another. She's not entirely confident that Laura would be able to pick her out of a line-up of short white rockstars. Laura coming out still matters to her personally, though. It means she isn't alone. 

  
She doesn't know any of that when she decides to tell her band she's trans. As far as she's concerned, she's on her own, and she doesn’t have any examples to play off of. But hell if it's going to stop her.  
  
  
Frankie decides to go into it while channeling her younger self, who had more spunk and less to lose.  So she grows out her hair (losing the dreadlock idea, to Jamia's laughing relief), and mentally gets ready for a fight. The trick was to bully her head into thinking all her absolute terror was adrenaline.  
On the day she's talked herself into doing it for real, her hands are shaking when she gets to work. She decides through sheer bloody-mindedness that it's a good omen.  
  
She corners all of her guys in the studio, signalling for a time-out out at the end of a take. They're playing, or trying to play, what will eventually become ‘Planetary GO’ but right then was only a bunch of noise and some hope. When everybody takes their headphones off she says she needs to tell them something.   
Rob, their producer who was also acting as their tech for the moment, flipped on the regular lights instead of the dancing techno-bright monstrosities someone (Gee) had insisted on, and then mimed smoking through the glass after holding up ten fingers. Break time.  
Frankie nodded at him, breathing a little freer once he left. It was only Gerard, Ray, Mikey and her in the studio, now. Pedicone was off getting some lunch. Frankie may or may not have planned it that way. If this went badly, she wanted it to go badly in front of some of her best friends and no one else.    
  
Obligingly, the others turn to her to listen to what she has to say. She keeps her guitar strap over her shoulder and runs her hand up and down the neck a few times.  
"So what's up?" Gerard asks, scratching his nose.  
Frankie took some deep breaths like her shrink Shauna had told her about. The others were looking at her. She hadn't expected how leaden her legs would feel. Don't panic. Nausea bloomed in her lungs nevertheless.   
“I’m trans,” she says finally.  
Three pairs of eyes blink back at her. Ray set his guitar down. “Sorry, what?” Gerard says.  
“I’m a woman,” Franke says. “I’m a trans woman. I, uh.” She casts around for a way to say it that wouldn’t be too wildly incorrect or sound like a school special. She couldn't come up with shit offhand. Fucking--  
“Wait, you’re a girl?” Mikey asks, eyebrows narrowing in confusion.  
Frankie nods again. She adjusts her grip on her Phant-O-Matic, quietly thanking the guitar gods and Cara from Epiphone for giving her it, as she did whenever she used it as a shield.   
“… oh.” Mikey looks like he was going to say something more, but he just turns to towards Gerard.  
Frankie both likes and occasionally hates how much she can read her long-time friends' expressions. Gerard's right then had transformed from tired but upbeat into earnest, confused and bright-eyed. (Over-bright-eyed, really; God knows the last time he’d slept. Frankie feels kind of bad for springing this on him now, with his newborn at home.) But he looks like a man who wanted very badly to say the right thing, and Frankie's stomach eases just a tiny bit.  
“So you, you just realized this?” Gerard asks, not hesitating exactly, but definitely picking his words.  
“No," Frankie says. “Since I was a kid.”  
“Oh,” Gerard replies, then falls silent too.  
  
“Why now?” Ray says, looking from Gerard to Frankie, concerned. “Are you, I mean. You don’t want to leave…?”  
“What? _No_ , holy shit,” Frankie blurts, blinking. She hadn’t even thought that could be an option to misconstrue. “Not at all. I just, I wanted you to know. I figured I couldn’t make this month any weirder.”  
Ray shakes his head, then gives a small laugh, and then nods. “That's fair, du-- um. Is there anything you want us to do?”  
Frankie raises her eyebrows.  
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Like, if you want us to back you up when you tell other people—”  
“No,” Frankie says immediately, shaking her head to illustrate the point. “I’m not telling anybody publically, and neither are any of you, I fucking swear to God.”  
“Alright,” Ray placates quickly. He scratches his shoulder-blade; a nervous tick. “I just wanted to know. That’s okay.”

Someone would’ve probably made a joke about that, in a normal circumstance, because as a band they’d never quite got out from under “I’m Not Okay”.  But since Frankie made the situation weird, the others only nod again.  
They should’ve gotten bobbleheads made of them all, not action figures. Frankie fights down a hysterical giggle.  
It doesn't seem like it's going badly, though. They all look a little-- surprised, for sure, and like they don't know what to say, but none of them seem like they're taking it _badly_.  
  
Just as the silence was passing awkward and becoming genuinely oppressive Mikey looks at the others and then clears his throat.  “I mean. We love you, Frankie,” he says. “This doesn’t, you know, change anything. Unless you want it to?”  
Frankie swallows her relief and avoids giggling again. This was an entirely inappropriate time to laugh. Seriously. “No,” she says. “I really don’t. Except, uh, call me ‘she’ and ‘her’ when you’re talking about me. And shit.”  
“Amongst ourselves, right?” Mikey clarifies.  
“Yeah.”  
Mikey nods again, rubbing his arm. “We can totally do that.”  
“Absolutely,” Gerard says quickly. Ray nods, too, echoing him.   
“Abso _looot_ ely,” Frankie parrots, and then she does burst out laughing, folding almost entirely in half at the force of it. She knows she must look like a maniac but the adrenaline is running out of her like air from a popped balloon, so she doesn’t care.

After a minute of listening to the others shuffling awkwardly, she feels a hand on her back. Ray. “You need to sit down?”  
In response she stands up straight and throws her arm around his too fucking tall shoulders. Mikey had appeared at her other side at some point during her laughing fit, so she throws an arm around him, too.  
Both of them jump a little but then hunch obligingly. Gerard hurried over to join the huddle, linking his arms with Mikey’s and Ray’s, and they were a circle like a pre-show.   
They were a _circuit_. Frankie can feel the energy through them, as weirdly hipster as that sounds. (The ciruit still felt slightly too small without Bob. It’d been a long six years with him in the band, and she missed him. But she’d get over that.)  
“-- wait, one more thing,” she says, and she can  _literally feel_ them all tense up. It's enough that she cackles a little. “Nothing bad! Nothing bad, I swear. But if you want you can call me Jess sometimes. Among ourselves. Like, Frankie's totally okay too, but, y'know. It's a thing I've been trying out."  
They all visibly relax. “That's a cool name,” Gerard says a little hesitantly.   
Mikey nods. "Jess sounds like a forester lady," he says, "Like, a lumberjack. Lots of plaid and kettle coffee and shit.”  
"Pine fresh," Gerard adds with a tiny, lopsided grin.  
“It suits you,” Ray says finally. He squeezes Frankie’s shoulder.  
Frankie smiles again and ignores how, potentially, there are some tears forming in her eyes. “Thanks you guys,” she says, and she means it a hell of a lot.

 

///


End file.
